To Slay the Dragon

IN THE SECOND CIRCLE

The Day: Obviously we will have to learn to abide by the absolute criteria of qualitative growth. We’ll have to reprogram ourselves with an eye to positive objectives. Very likely such political battles, particularly the next presidential campaign, will once again face us with a choice.

Oleksandr LYTVYNENKO: Allow me to disagree. I like Ms. Rozhkova’s metaphor about the dragon. However, in addition to the bureaucratic mentality, there is a broader matrix. In actuality, our politicians are professionals, although under our conditions. We consider the Western criteria and try to use them to assess our homebred [politicians]. Of course, it doesn’t work and the result is extremely negative. It couldn’t be otherwise. The point is not to borrow from the West but to work out our own [criteria], allowing for Western attainments.

Iryna ROZHKOVA: It’s hard to disagree, but there are several fields of endeavor among those the people elect. Very often it is clearly apparent that some politicians or other do not realize that as professionals they have to deliver political products; that they must be interested in maintaining contact not so much with those putting them forward from among themselves (bureaucrats, businessmen, and so on) as with the electorate. Instead, they remember their voters only once in four years, mostly by paying lip service.

LYTVYNENKO: That’s right. Our electoral mechanisms are recent borrowings. It is extremely interesting to read the minutes of sittings of the (Tsarist) Russian Duma. Actually, all the issues broached there — responsible government, local self-government, and so on — were debated at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Russian Empire collapsed because it could not grasp modern modified values. We are in the second circle of modernization, and there are usually at least three such circles.

ROZHKOVA: Do you suggest lowering standards for our politicians?

LYTVYNENKO: Certainly not. I proceed from the assumption that the ideal and real are different things. We cannot ignore the reality.

ROZHKOVA: I believe that it’s worth discussing other goals except money and portfolios.

LYTVYNENKO: That’s precisely what’s happening. People have learned to invest in infrastructures and construction projects. In other words, they are determined to live in this country, not elsewhere. That’s progress.

If one tried to sum up the Ukrainian interest in principle, it would be progress. Not stagnation or degradation, but development. What kind of model or situation do you think could secure such development with the least possible losses? Allowing, of course, that we are not building a virtual Ukraine but considering what we actually have, with all the controversies that exist.

Serhiy MAKSYMENKO: At one time I thought a bicameral parliament was bad for Ukraine. Now the proposal is no longer on the agenda. I believe that the same will happen to the idea of the president being elected by the parliament. I am convinced that Ukraine should remain a presidential republic, at least for the next few years. We could accomplish a lot if we added a law on proportional representation to the Constitution.

ROZHKOVA: My impression is that our so-called unstable stability will continue, since most influential players of the game are interested in it.. We’ll have an unstable parity, exchanging blows in the economic sphere and reshuffling the political cards... There are no ideal formulas. I even think that attempts to give ideal recommendations are unprofessional. For example, depending on the electoral procedures, we could get two totally different parliaments. If it’s majority, it means carte blanche for the administrative resource; if it’s proportional, let’s face it, it means economic capital combined with the administrative one. Here candidates will be elected by centrist and rightist party rosters. The logic of two previous election campaigns testifies to this. Thus, we must choose the lesser of two evils and we can only rely on an evolutionary process. The electorate should develop some kind of political indentity so that people can cast their ballots consciously, without repeating their own mistakes. It’s the method of trial and error, but we have no alternative.

LYTVYNENKO: There is something else. First, the structure of power is not that much of a point in principle. A presidential or parliamentary republic makes no difference, and I agree with Mrs. Rozhkova that we still have to travel a long and thorny road. There is, however, the problem of outside influence. We must be aware of it and that we still need a sufficiently effective executive branch. As for the dragon analogy, neither the majority nor the proportional, not even a majority- proportional electoral system can narrow the gap between the elite and the electorate by itself. Under the proportional representation system we will have more responsible parties, but we all know precisely how such party rosters are drawn up.

MAKSYMENKO: Does this have such importance in principle? If a party clearly states its program and is supported by a considerable part of the electorate, that part of society is able to influence their elected officials and monitor their performance. In fact, the coming to power by many wealthy and influential individuals — preferably intelligent and decent ones — is a normal phenomenon in any nontotalitarian society. Of course, the set of tools is very important. In other words, [the question is] how to arrange for the best representatives of society to receive the political and economic levers. One other thing: I regard as positive the desire of various groups of the political elite — administrative, intellectual, military, and so on — to communicate if not help each other, so as to crystallize a consolidated social interest for which they could all work.

ROZHKOVA: I think you have a point there. You’ve raised the standard high, yet I feel that there is a problem of collectiveness, so to say, even within separate groups. In other words, once any of the economic or administrative principles is brought out, a given financial-political group falls apart. They lack unity and ideology; they are built on different principles. This is their problem.

CAUSES FOR DISCUSSION

LYTVYNENKO: I think another principal aspect is that the draft political reforms have a dangerous clause banning the deputies from switching factions. From the point of view of European democratic norms, it means transition to the so- called imperative mandate. History knows several examples in the Soviet Union and certain other sufficiently nondemocratic countries. Moreover, the proposal to authorize the party leadership to punish such deserters by canceling their status as people’s deputies is a purely Ukrainian innovation that will influence the formation of leader-oriented or avant-gardist rather than parliamentary parties. For this reason it is necessary to provide the conditions for the establishment of collectives as more stable groups.

We seem to try to fix consequences rather than take a closer look at the causes.

ROZHKOVA: An analysis of party electoral rolls shows that the process of their becoming oligarchic is at full throttle, primarily in the leftist camp. Here cadre fluctuations are reduced to a minimum. Therefore, the proposed imperative mandate in the draft political reform (with left co-authors) is no coincidence; a mechanism of retaining power within the party is consciously introduced, pointing to an inner-party crisis.

Actually, it would serve everybody’s benefit to have a law, particularly one on elections, representing first the electorate, not party interests.

It would be good if what Ms. Rozhkova has just pointed out did not sound idealistic in this society. Every time we return to the same question: Why is it not so and how are we to switch to a different positive logic of development? In twelve years of independence, Ukraine has developed a trend of being a parasite on the economic heritage left by the Soviet Union. The origin of capital was then special; it was, figuratively speaking, produced by certain political technologies. We need a new economic policy for our business to acquire qualitatively new forms. The question is: Who can change the situation qualitatively? What mechanisms can be used to guide our development into a qualitatively new vein? As the idea of a political reform appeared, we asked ourselves whether it was time to switch to a parliamentary-presidential system, if it was at all possible in Ukraine. At one time — at the outset of Ukrainian independence — proportional representation elections were possible. The situation appears to have since become more complex.

LYTVYNENKO: This parliament is a reflection of our society. Maybe that’s bad, but it’s only natural.

Well, perhaps it is adequate rather than natural. And so can we say that this antilogic of development has been exhausted, or that it was not the worst possible situation? What would it take to make the situation in Ukraine change for the better?

ROZHKOVA: I would suggest treating the subject in a public discussion and end this one by proposing a team of experts and hearing what they have to say. Ask them questions and hear their answers.

How would you formulate an agenda for such an expert discussion? What questions should be posed our experts that aren’t present here today, so they could join the discussion?

LYTVYNENKO: I think that any election campaign is a contract executed afterwards. In our case we must see to it that the cost of this contract and of the concessions it contains is not too high.

ROZHKOVA: Various approaches would be possible. How do our experts visualize the future of Ukraine as a whole? What models they find acceptable, where we should be going, and what resources can we count on.

MAKSYMENKO: The role of civil society in the formation of an elite is an extremely important aspect. Here a lot of questions can be asked: What has Ukraine actually achieved over the years of independence? I have communicated with a number of experts, among them foreigners — Americans and Europeans. They frankly point out that we aren’t paying enough attention to this aspect, and that Ukraine has actually made considerable attainments over the period.

Here at the editorial office we have had several discussions with physicians and it was stated that our elite has a psychiatric problem, that they are afflicted with megalomania against the background of an inferiority complex. This malaise must be treated by bringing closer together concepts of ourselves in different countries, in time, space, and development. There are myths about Ukrainians. They have to be opened and looked inside, discarding what we do not need and modeling new things. Instead, we have closely followed domestic media coverage of the Ukrainian peacekeeping contingents in Kuwait and Iraq, a topic of utmost importance for the Ukrainian elite. This could not fit in with any system of values. At best, it was objective information; at worst, kitchen debates, with the emphasis on the negative. They say that one must find one’s country first and take up politics after. Our newspaper urges our colleagues to realize what country we all live in and what system of values and coordinates we practice.

ROZHKOVA: The presidential campaign has begun. I think it would be interesting to ask the hopefuls in this race how they see the system of coordinates of the society they are trying to build.

Larysa IVSHYNA: Not a bad idea. We will formulate this question and then publish the replies — if any. And if they remain silent, we will write about their silence.